Shirley Jackson We Have Always Lived In The Castle First .

Transcription

Shirley JacksonWe Have Always Lived in the CastleFirst published in 1962For Pascal CoviciMy name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have oftenthought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my handsare the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I likemy sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in myfamily is dead.The last time I glanced at the library books on the kitchen shelf they were more than five months overdue, and Iwondered whether I would have chosen differently if I had known that these were the last books, the ones whichwould stand forever on our kitchen shelf. We rarely moved things; the Blackwoods were never much of a family forrestlessness and stirring. We dealt with the small surface transient objects, the books and the flowers and the spoons,but underneath we had always a solid foundation of stable possessions. We always put things back where theybelonged. We dusted and swept under tables and chairs and beds and pictures and rugs and lamps, but we left themwhere they were; the tortoise-shell toilet set on our mother's dressing table was never off place by so much as afraction of an inch. Blackwoods had always lived in our house, and kept their things in order; as soon as a newBlackwood wife moved in, a place was found for her belongings, and so our house was built up with layers ofBlackwood property weighting it, and keeping it steady against the world.It was on a Friday in late April that I brought the library books into our house. Fridays and Tuesdays were terribledays, because I had to go into the village. Someone had to go to the library, and the grocery; Constance never wentpast her own garden, and Uncle Julian could not. Therefore it was not pride that took me into the village twice a week,or even stubbornness, but only the simple need for books and food. It may have been pride that brought me intoStella's for a cup of coffee before I started home; I told myself it was pride and would not avoid going into Stella's nomatter how much I wanted to be at home, but I knew, too, that Stella would see me pass if I did not go in, and perhapsthink I was afraid, and that thought I could not endure."Good morning, Mary Katherine," Stella always said, reaching over to wipe the counter with a damp rag, "howare you today?""Very well, thank you.""And Constance Blackwood, is she well?""Very well, thank you.""And how is he?""As well as can be expected. Black coffee, please."If anyone else came in and sat down at the counter I would leave my coffee without seeming hurried, and leave,nodding goodbye to Stella. "Keep well," she always said automatically as I went out.I chose the library books with care. There were books in our house, of course; our father's study had bookscovering two walls, but I liked fairy tales and books of history, and Constance liked books about food. Although UncleJulian never took up a book, he liked to see Constance reading in the evenings while he worked at his papers, andsometimes he turned his head to look at her and nod."What are you reading, my dear? A pretty sight, a lady with a book.""I'm reading something called The Art of Cooking , Uncle Julian.""Admirable."We never sat quietly for long, of course, with Uncle Julian in the room, but I do not recall that Constance and Ihave ever opened the library books which are still on our kitchen shelf. It was a fine April morning when I came outfile:///C xt[7/1/2010 10:08:02 PM]

of the library; the sun was shining and the false glorious promises of spring were everywhere, showing oddly throughthe village grime. I remember that I stood on the library steps holding my books and looking for a minute at the softhinted green in the branches against the sky and wishing, as I always did, that I could walk home across the skyinstead of through the village. From the library steps I could cross the street directly and walk on the other side alongto the grocery, but that meant that I must pass the general store and the men sitting in front. In this village the menstayed young and did the gossiping and the women aged with grey evil weariness and stood silently waiting for themen to get up and come home. I could leave the library and walk up the street on this side until I was opposite thegrocery and then cross; that was preferable, although it took me past the post office and the Rochester house with thepiles of rusted tin and the broken automobiles and the empty gas tins and the old mattresses and plumbing fixtures andwash tubs that the Harler family brought home and -- I genuinely believe -- loved.The Rochester house was the loveliest in town and had once had a walnut-panelled library and a second-floorballroom and a profusion of roses along the veranda; our mother had been born there and by rights it should havebelonged to Constance. I decided as I always did that it would be safer to go past the post office and the Rochesterhouse, although I disliked seeing the house where our mother was born. This side of the street was generally desertedin the morning, since it was shady, and after I went into the grocery I would in any case have to pass the general storeto get home, and passing it going and coming was more than I could bear.Outside the village, on Hill Road and River Road and Old Mountain, people like the Clarkes and the Carringtonshad built new lovely homes. They had to come through the village to get to Hill Road and River Road because themain street of the village was also the main highway across the state, but the Clarke children and the Carrington boyswent to private schools and the food in the Hill Road kitchens came from the towns and the city; mail was taken fromthe village post office by car along the River Road and up to Old (Mountain, but the Mountain people mailed theirletters in the towns and the River Road people had their hair cut in the city.I was always puzzled that the people of the village, living in their dirty little houses on the main highway or outon Creek Road, smiled and nodded and waved when the Clarkes and the Carringtons drove by; if Helen Clarke cameinto Elbert's Grocery to pick up a can of tomato sauce or a pound of coffee her cook had forgotten everyone told her"Good morning," and said the weather was better today. The Clarkes' house is newer but no finer than the Blackwoodhouse. Our father brought home the first piano ever seen in the village. The Carringtons own the paper mill but theBlackwoods own all the land between the highway and the river. The Shepherds of Old Mountain gave the village itstown hall, which is white and peaked and set in a green lawn with a cannon in front. There was some talk once ofputting in zoning laws in the village and tearing down the shacks on Creek Road and building up the whole village tomatch the town hall, but no one ever lifted a finger; maybe they thought the Blackwoods might take to attending townmeetings if they did. The villagers get their hunting and fishing licenses in the town hall, and once a year the Clarkesand the Carringtons and the Shepherds attend town meeting and solemnly vote to get the Harler junk yard off MainStreet and take away the benches in front of the general store, and each year the villagers gleefully outvote them. Pastthe town hall, bearing to the left, is Blackwood Road, which is the way home. Blackwood Road goes in a great circlearound the Blackwood land and along every inch of Blackwood Road is a wire fence built by our father. Not far pastthe town hall is the big black rock which marks the entrance to the path where I unlock the gate and lock it behind meand go through the woods and am home.The people of the village have always hated us.I played a game when I did the shopping. I thought about the children's games where the board is marked intolittle spaces and each player moves according to a throw of the dice; there were always dangers, like "lose one turn"and "go back four spaces" and "return to start," and little helps, like "advance three spaces" and "take an extra turn."The library was my start and the black rock was my goal. I had to move down one side of Main Street, cross, and thenmove up the other side until I reached the black rock, when I would win. I began well, with a good safe turn along theempty side of Main Street, and perhaps this would turn out to be one of the very good days; it was like that sometimes,but not often on spring mornings. If it was a very good day I would later make an offering of jewelry out of gratitude.I walked quickly when I started, taking a deep breath to go on with and not looking around; I had the librarybooks and my shopping bag to carry and I watched my feet moving one after the other; two feet in our mother's oldbrown shoes. I felt someone watching me from inside the post office -- we did not accept mail, and we did not have atelephone; both had become unbearable six years before -- but I could bear a quick stare from the office; that was oldMiss Dutton, who never did her staring out in the open like other folks, but only looked out between blinds or frombehind curtains. I never looked at the Rochester house. I could not bear to think of our mother being born there. Iwondered sometimes if the Harler people knew that they lived in a house which should have belonged to Constance;there was always so much noise of crashing tinware in their yard that they could not hear me walking. Perhaps thefile:///C xt[7/1/2010 10:08:02 PM]

Harlers thought that the unending noise drove away demons, or perhaps they were musical and found it agreeable;perhaps the Harlers lived inside the way they did outside, sitting in old bathtubs and eating their dinner off brokenplates set on the skeleton of an old Ford car, rattling cans as they ate, and talking in bellows. A spray of dirt alwayslay across the sidewalk where the Harlers lived.Crossing the street (lose one turn) came next, to get to the grocery directly opposite. I always hesitated, vulnerableand exposed, on the side of the road while the traffic went by. Most Main Street traffic was going through, cars andtrucks passing through the village because the highway did, so the drivers hardly glanced at me; I could tell a local carby the quick ugly glance from the driver and I wondered, always, what would happen if I stepped down from the curbonto the road; would there be a quick, almost unintended swerve toward me? Just to scare me, perhaps, just to see mejump? And then the laughter, coming from all sides, from behind the blinds in the post office, from the men in front ofthe general store, from the women peering out of the grocery doorway, all of them watching and gloating, to see MaryKatherine Blackwood scurrying out of the way of a car. I sometimes lost two or even three turns because I waited socarefully for the road to clear in both directions before I crossed.In the middle of the street I came out of the shade and into the bright, misleading sunshine of April; by July thesurface of the road would be soft in the heat and my feet would stick, making the crossing more perilous (MaryKatherine Blackwood, her foot caught in the tar, cringing as a car bore down on her; go back, all the way, and startover), and the buildings would be uglier. All of the village was of a piece, a time, and a style; it was as though thepeople needed the ugliness of the village, and fed on it. The houses and the stores seemed to have been set up incontemptuous haste to provide shelter for the drab and the unpleasant, and the Rochester house and the Blackwoodhouse and even the town hall had been brought here perhaps accidentally from some far lovely country where peoplelived with grace. Perhaps the fine houses had been captured -- perhaps as punishment for the Rochesters and theBlackwoods and their secret bad hearts? -- and were held prisoner in the village; perhaps their slow rot was a sign ofthe ugliness of the villagers. The row of stores along Main Street was unchangingly grey. The people who owned thestores lived above them, in a row of second-story apartments, and the curtains in the regular line of second-storywindows were pale and without life; whatever planned to be colorful lost its heart quickly in the village. The blight onthe village never came from the Blackwoods; the villagers belonged here and the village was the only proper place forthem.I always thought about rot when I came toward the row of stores; I thought about burning black painful rot thatate away from inside, hurting dreadfully. I wished it on the village.I had a shopping list for the grocery; Constance made it out for me every Tuesday and Friday before I left home.The people of the village disliked the fact that we always had plenty of money to pay for whatever we wanted; we hadtaken our money out of the bank, of course, and I knew they talked about the money hidden in our house, as though itwere great heaps of golden coins and Constance and Uncle Julian and I sat in the evenings, our library booksforgotten, and played with it, running our hands through it and counting and stacking and tumbling it, jeering andmocking behind locked doors. I imagine that there were plenty of rotting hearts in the village coveting our heaps ofgolden coins but they were cowards and they were afraid of Blackwoods. When I took my grocery list out of myshopping bag I took out the purse too so that Elbert in the grocery would know that I had brought money and he couldnot refuse to sell to me. It never mattered who was in the grocery. I was always served at once; Mr. Elbert or hispale greedy wife always came right away from wherever they were in the store to get me what I wanted. Sometimes, iftheir older boy was helping out in school vacation, they hurried to make sure that he was not the one who waited onme and once when a little girl -- a child strange to the village, of course -- came close to me in the grocery Mrs. Elbertpulled her back so roughly that she screamed and then there was a long still minute while everyone waited before Mrs.Elbert took a breath and said, "Anything else?" I always stood perfectly straight and stiff when the children cameclose, because I was afraid of them. I was afraid that they might touch me and the mothers would come at me like aflock of taloned hawks; that was always the picture I had in my mind -- birds descending, striking, gashing with razorclaws. Today I had a great many things to buy for Constance, and it was a relief to see that there were no children inthe store and not many women; take an extra turn, I thought, and said to Mr. Elbert, "Good morning."He nodded to me; he could not go entirely without greeting me and yet the women in the store were watching. Iturned my back to them, but I could feel them standing behind me, holding a can or a half-filled bag of cookies or ahead of lettuce, not willing to move until I had gone out through the door again and the wave of talk began and theywere swept back into their own lives. Mrs. Donell was back there somewhere; I had seen her as I came in, and Iwondered as I had before if she came on purpose when she knew I was coming, because she always tried to saysomething; she was one of the few who spoke."A roasting chicken," I said to Mr. Elbert, and across the store his greedy wife opened the refrigerated case andfile:///C xt[7/1/2010 10:08:02 PM]

took out a chicken and began to wrap it. "A small leg of lamb," I said, "my Uncle Julian always fancies a roasted lambin the first spring days." I should not have said it, I knew, and a little gasp went around the store like a scream. I couldmake them run like rabbits, I thought, if I said to them what I really wanted to, but they would only gather againoutside and watch for me there. "Onions," I said politely to Mr. Elbert, "coffee, bread, flour. Walnuts," I said, "andsugar; we are very low on sugar." Somewhere behind me there was a little horrified laugh, and Mr. Elbert glanced pastme, briefly, and then to the items he was arranging on the counter. In a minute Mrs. Elbert would bring my chickenand my meat, wrapped, and set them down by the other things; I need not turn around until I was ready to go. "Twoquarts of milk," I said. "A half pint of cream, a pound of butter." The Harrises had stopped delivering dairy goods to ussix years ago and I brought milk and butter home from the grocery now. "And a dozen eggs." Constance had forgottento put eggs on the list, but there had been only two at home. "A box of peanut brittle," I said; Uncle Julian wouldclatter and crunch over his papers tonight, and go to bed sticky."The Blackwoods always did set a fine table." That was Mrs. Donell, speaking clearly from somewhere behindme, and someone giggled and someone else said "Shh." I never turned; it was enough to feel them all there in back ofme without looking into their flat grey faces with the hating eyes. I wish you were all dead, I thought, and longed tosay it out loud. Constance said, "Never let them see that you care," and "If you pay any attention they'll only getworse," and probably it was true, but I wished they were dead. I would have liked to come into the grocery somemorning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain and dying. I would thenhelp myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and gohome, with perhaps a kick for Mrs. Donell while she lay there. I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this; I onlywished they would come true. "It's wrong to hate them," Constance said, "it only weakens you," but I hated themanyway, and wondered why it had been worth while creating them in the first place.Mr. Elbert put all my groceries together on the counter and waited, looking past me into the distance. "That's all Iwant today," I told him, and without looking at me he wrote the prices on a slip and added, then passed the slip to meso I could make sure he had not cheated me. I always made a point of checking his figures carefully, although he nevermade a mistake; there were not many things I could do to get back at them, but I did what I could. The groceries filledmy shopping bag and another bag besides, but there was no way of getting them home except by carrying them. Noone would ever offer to help me, of course, even if I would let them.Lose two turns. With my library books and my groceries, going slowly, I had to walk down the sidewalk past thegeneral store and into Stella's. I stopped in the doorway of the grocery, feeling around inside myself for some thoughtto make me safe. Behind me the little stirrings and coughings began. They were getting ready to talk again, and acrossthe width of the store the Elberts were probably rolling their eyes at each other in relief. I froze my face hard. Today Iwas going to think about taking our lunch out into the garden, and while I kept my eyes open just enough to see whereI was walking -- our mother's brown shoes going up and down -- in my mind I was setting the table with a green clothand bringing out yellow dishes and strawberries in a white bowl. Yellow dishes, I thought, feeling the eyes of the menlooking at me as I went by, and Uncle Julian shall have a nice soft egg with toast broken into it, and I will rememberto ask Constance to put a shawl across his shoulders because it is still very early spring. Without looking I could seethe grinning and the gesturing; I wished they were all dead and I was walking on their bodies. They rarely spokedirectly to me, but only to each other. "That's one of the Blackwood girls," I heard one of them say in a high mockingvoice, "one of the Blackwood girls from Blackwood Farm." "Too bad about the Blackwoods," someone else said, justloud enough, "too bad about those poor girls." "Nice farm out there," they said, "nice land to farm. Man could get rich,farming the Blackwood land. If he had a million years and three heads, and didn't care what grew, a man could getrich. Keep their land pretty well locked up, the Blackwoods do." "Man could get rich." "Too bad about the Blackwoodgirls." "Never can tell what'll grow on Blackwood land."I am walking on their bodies, I thought, we are having lunch in the garden and Uncle Julian is wearing his shawl.I always held my groceries carefully along here, because one terrible morning I had dropped the shopping bag and theeggs broke and the milk spilled and I gathered up what I could while they shouted, telling myself that whatever I did Iwould not run away, shovelling cans and boxes and spilled sugar wildly back into the shopping bag, telling myself notto run away.In front of Stella's there was a crack in the sidewalk that looked like a finger pointing; the crack had always beenthere. Other landmarks, like the handprint Johnny Harris made in the concrete foundation of the town hall and theMueller boy's initials on the library porch, had been put in in times that I remembered; I was in the third grade at theschool when the town hall was built. But the crack in the sidewalk in front of Stella's had always been there, just asStella's had always been there. I remember roller-skating across the crack, and being careful not to step on it or itwould break our mother's back, and riding a bicycle past here with my hair flying behind; the villagers had not openlyfile:///C xt[7/1/2010 10:08:02 PM]

disliked us then although our father said they were trash. Our mother told me once that the crack was here when shewas a girl in the Rochester house, so it must have been here when she married our father and went to live onBlackwood Farm, and I suppose the crack was there, like a finger pointing, from the time when the village was firstput together out of old grey wood and the ugly people with their evil faces were brought from some impossible placeand set down in the houses to live.Stella bought the coffee urn and put in the marble counter with the insurance money when her husband died, butotherwise there had been no change in Stella's since I could remember; Constance and I had come in here to spendpennies after school and every afternoon we picked up the newspaper to take home for our father to read in theevening; we no longer bought newspapers, but Stella still sold them, along with magazines and penny candy and greypostcards of the town hall."Good morning, Mary Katherine," Stella said when I sat down at the counter and put my groceries on the floor; Isometimes thought when I wished all the village people dead that I might spare Stella because she was the closest tokind that any of them could be, and the only one who managed to keep hold of any color at all. She was round andpink and when she put on a bright print dress it stayed looking bright for a little while before it merged into the dirtygrey of the rest. "How are you today?" she asked."Very well, thank you.""And Constance Blackwood, is she well?""Very well, thank you.""And how is he ?""As well as can be expected. Black coffee, please." I really preferred sugar and cream in my coffee, because it issuch bitter stuff, but since I only came here out of pride I needed to accept only the barest minimum for token.If anyone came into Stella's while I was there I got up and left quietly, but some days I had bad luck. Thismorning she had only set my coffee down on the counter when there was a shadow against the doorway, and Stellalooked up, and said, "Good morning, Jim." She went down to the other end of the counter and waited, expecting himto sit down there so I could leave without being noticed, but it was Jim Donell and I knew at once that today I had badluck. Some of the people in the village had real faces that I knew and could hate individually; Jim Donell and his wifewere among these, because they were deliberate instead of just hating dully and from habit like the others. Most peoplewould have stayed down at the end of the counter where Stella waited, but Jim Donell came right to the end where Iwas sitting and took the stool next to me, as close to me as he could come because, I knew, he wanted this morning tobe bad luck for me."They tell me," he said, swinging to sit sideways on his stool and look at me directly, "they tell me you're movingaway."I wished he would not sit so close to me; Stella came toward us on the inside of the counter and I wished shewould ask him to move so I could get up and leave without having to struggle around him. "They tell me you'removing away," he said solemnly. "No," I said, because he was waiting. "Funny," he said, looking from me to Stellaand then back. "I could have swore someone told me you'd be going soon." "No," I said."Coffee, Jim?" Stella asked."Who do you think would of started a story like that, Stella? Who do you think would want to tell me they'removing away when they're not doing any such thing?" Stella shook her head at him, but she was trying not to smile. Isaw that my hands were tearing at the paper napkin in my lap, ripping off a little corner, and I forced my hands to bestill and made a rule for myself: Whenever I saw a tiny scrap of paper I was to remember to be kinder to Uncle Julian."Can't ever tell how gossip gets around," Jim Donnell said. Perhaps someday soon Jim Donnell would die;perhaps there was already a rot growing inside him that was going to kill him. "Did you ever hear anything like thegossip in this town?" he asked Stella."Leave her alone, Jim," Stella said.Uncle Julian was an old man and he was dying, dying regrettably, more surely than Jim Donell and Stella andanyone else. The poor old Uncle Julian was dying and I made a firm rule to be kinder to him. We would have a picniclunch on the lawn. Constance would bring his shawl and put it over his shoulders, and I would lie on the grass."I'm not bothering anybody, Stell. Am I bothering anybody? I'm just asking Miss Mary Katherine Black-woodhere how it happens everyone in town is saying she and her big sister are going to be leaving us soon. Moving away.Going somewheres else to live." He stirred his coffee; from the corner of my eye I could see the spoon going aroundand around and around, and I wanted to laugh. There was something so simple and silly about the spoon going aroundwhile Jim Donell talked; I wondered if he would stop talking if I reached out and took hold of the spoon. Very likelyhe would, I told myself wisely, very likely he would throw the coffee in my face.file:///C xt[7/1/2010 10:08:02 PM]

"Going somewheres else," he said sadly."Cut it out," Stella said.I would listen more carefully when Uncle Julian told his story. I was already bringing peanut brittle; that wasgood."Here I was all upset," Jim Donell said, "thinking the town would be losing one of its fine old families. Thatwould be really too bad." He swung the other way around on the stool because someone else was coming through thedoorway; I was looking at my hands in my lap and of course would not turn around to see who was coming, but thenJim Donell said "Joe," and I knew it was Dunham, the carpenter; "Joe, you ever hear anything like this? Here all overtown they're saying that the Blackwoods are moving away, and now Miss Mary Katherine Blackwood sits right hereand speaks up and tells me they're not."There was a little silence. I knew that Dunham was scowling, looking at Jim Donell and at Stella and at me,thinking over what he had heard, sorting out the words and deciding what each one meant. "That so?" he said at last."Listen, you two," Stella said, but Jim Donell went right on, talking with his back to me, and his legs stretchedout so I could not get past him and outside. "I was saying to people only this morning it's too bad when the oldfamilies go. Although you could rightly say a good number of the Blackwoods are gone already." He laughed, andslapped the counter with his hand. "Gone already," he said again. The spoon in his cup was still, but he was talking on."A village loses a lot of style when the fine old people go. Anyone would think," he said slowly, "that they wasn'twanted.""That's right," Dunham said, and he laughed."The way they live up in their fine old private estate, with their fences and their private path and their stylish wayof living." He always went on until he was tired. When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often andin as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wring each one dry. Besides, eachtime he repeated himself he thought it was funnier; I knew he might go on like this until he was really sure that no onewas listening any more, and I made a rule for myself: Never think anything more than once, and I put my handsquietly in my lap. I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have a little house all by myself on the moon."Well," Jim Donell said; he smelled, too. "I can always tell people I used to know the Blackwoods. They neverdid anything to me that I can remember, always perfectly polite to me . Not," he said, and laughed, "that I ever gotinvited to take my dinner with them, nothing like that.""That's enough right there," Stella said, and her voice was sharp. "You go pick on someone else, Jim Donell.""Was I picking on anyone? You think I wanted to be asked to dinner? You think I'm crazy ?""Me," Dunham said, "I can always tell people I fixed their broken ste

We Have Always Lived in the Castle First published in 1962 For Pascal Covici My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my handsFile Size: 237KBPage Count: 61Explore further[PDF] We Have Always Lived in the Castle Book by Shirley .blindhypnosis.com[PDF] The Lottery Book by Shirley Jackson Free Download .blindhypnosis.com[PDF] The Glass Castle Book by Jeannette Walls Free .blindhypnosis.comTHE LOTTERY SHIRLEY JACKSON - nbed.nb.caweb1.nbed.nb.ca[PDF] Life As We Knew It Book by Susan Beth Pfeffer Free .blindhypnosis.comRecommended to you b